


A Thousand Reasons to Leave

by Asselin



Category: Watchmen (2009)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2013-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:07:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21877897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asselin/pseuds/Asselin
Summary: Whatever happens, Dan is apparently stuck with Rorschach.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	A Thousand Reasons to Leave

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CousinShelley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CousinShelley/gifts).



> Disclaimer: Watchmen does not belong to me or mine. I am not making money off of this story, nor do I intend to.
> 
> 2019 EDIT: A few years ago, I planned to remove all my posted stories from this account and only use it to leave kudos occasionally. However, removing what were gifts to other people without even a warning was a mistake, so as of now I'm reposting all of my Yuletide works.  
> And thank you, CousinShelley, for sending me the email that started this!

The first time that Dan encountered the vigilante known as Rorschach, they were both in a smoky, sleazy bar. For his own part, Dan had been there to get information on a recent robbery. He had never bothered to find out what Rorschach was doing there, but there in the midst of normally dressed people, the five and a half foot vigilante had stuck out like a sore thumb; how could he not have? Although, on reflection, perhaps what had drawn Dan’s attention most was the fact that there was a man screaming in that corner of the bar.

Even years later, he could remember the first thing he ever heard Rorschach say, in that hoarse monotone of his:

“Hard to work without a thumb. Would you like to find out yourself?”

Back then, the tone he said it in had sent chills down Dan’s spine, but despite that, he had sort of had to admire the results it got. The man had immediately begun babbling, his eyes fixed on where Rorschach had his thumb twisted precariously. Whatever he had said, apparently it had been enough for Rorschach, as he released the man’s thumb with an almost contemptuous flick. Stepping back, he had turned up the collar of his trenchcoat and disappeared into the crowd.

Dan hadn’t known who the man was back then, but there had been a sense that it hadn’t been the last time he would see him.

++

It was a long time before they actually met face-to-face and introduced themselves, during which time they saw each other in passing half a dozen times at least. Even back then, Rorschach had been quiet, not usually speaking unless he had to. The two things that had really struck Dan about his speech were the painfully hoarse quality to his voice and his peculiar grammar which frequently resulted in sentences without pronouns. He had often wondered if that was the way Rorschach normally spoke, or if it was an extra precaution against his identity being discovered. Either way, he must have been genuinely hoarse by the end of the evening.

Then one evening, he put forth an idea which had been bothering him for some time.

“Hey, why don’t we team up?”

Rorschach cocked his head curiously, as if asking ‘why on earth would we do that?’ Dan immediately scrambled to clarify, thinking perhaps he had been too presumptuous.

“Well, I mean, we don’t necessarily have to actually work together, but...well, we could share information, at least, couldn’t we? If you prefer working alone...”

Rorschach still didn’t speak. Dan could have kicked himself, only he suspected that the other vigilante might be doing that soon enough without his help.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up,” he sighed. “Listen, I’m really sorry.”

Turning around in silence, the other vigilante began to walk away, and Dan despaired of ever seeing him again, much less exchanging a civil conversation. But then he heard Rorschach’s hoarse voice calling back to him:

“Alley, three blocks from here, between two tenement buildings. Week from now. Can start nightly patrols then.”

Then he was gone, and even if Dan could have spoken for the shock paralyzing him, it wouldn’t have done any good.

++

When Rorschach informed Dan, while out on one of their nightly patrols, that he would likely be absent for several nights, Dan didn’t pry. They both had nights when they needed to work on a case by themselves, although Rorschach’s came around more often. Dan seldom asked for details anymore; he had once, early in their partnership, and Rorschach had told him to mind his own business--albeit in many fewer words, and in the enunciated tone that he used when he was being terse, but nonetheless.

So Dan said that it was okay, that he had a few things he could be working on alone himself, anyway. Rorschach glanced at him--at least, his head twitched in Dan’s direction--and Dan thought he saw a small nod.

Early the next morning, so early that the sun hadn’t even begun to lighten the sky, they parted ways as they always did. But this time, as Dan turned to head for home, Rorschach caught his hand. Dan turned back, surprised, and felt as though he had locked eyes with his partner even through the shifting mask. Then, so small that he wasn’t quite sure if he hadn’t imagined it, he felt his hand being shaken.

“You are...a good friend, Daniel,” Rorschach said, so soft and awkward that it didn’t even sound like him.

For a moment, all Dan could do was stare in astonishment. This wasn’t like his partner at all. But those were, perhaps, the sweetest words he had ever heard. “Hey, anytime,” he replied just as awkwardly. “Listen, you take care of yourself, alright?”

Releasing Dan’s hand, Rorschach nodded, stuffing his hands in his pockets and looking down at the sidewalk.

When they parted ways that morning, Dan hadn’t had the faintest idea that that had been the last time he would see his partner as he knew him.

++

When Rorschach came back almost a week later, Dan knew immediately that something was wrong. His partner’s entire body was visibly tensed as though for a fight, and he didn’t even seem to hear Dan’s greeting. They went almost silently about the streets, searching for some sort of unrest, although Dan suspected that the greatest unrest was walking next to him. He said nothing, consoling himself that perhaps Rorschach was preoccupied.

That first night went by with nothing of special note, and they parted ways, Rorschach simply walking away instead of saying goodbye in his laconic fashion as Dan was used to. Dan himself went home in a preoccupied haze, worried for his partner’s state.

Then the second night, they went back to the bar where they had first run into each other for information, and it was there that Dan learned just how wrong something was.

They headed for the nearest man, Dan intending only to ask him for any news he might have. But he brushed them both off and went back to nursing his glass. Before Dan could say a word, Rorschach had grabbed the back of his head, roughly slamming his face against the bar, shattering the glass and embedding pieces of it in his face in the process, and growled in a feral tone of voice,

“What do you know?”

Dan tried to pry his partner off the sobbing man, but the instant he touched Rorschach’s shoulder, the muscles tensed so sharply that aside from the warmth, it didn’t feel as though his hand had hold of something living at all.

“Hey, he didn’t do anything,” he soothed. “Let him go.”

Refusing to turn around, Rorschach growled, “Take hands off me, Daniel.”

“Let him go first.”

Thankfully, Rorschach obeyed, throwing the man roughly against the bar. Still, Dan didn’t let go of him until he had steered him out of the bar, murmuring feeble apologies as he went.

“What’s up with you?” he all but shouted once they were outside. “That guy just didn’t want to talk to us, and you go ballistic over that?”

“He knows something,” Rorschach replied. “They all do.”

“Knows something-- I ‘know something’, Rorschach, but you haven’t slammed my face into a glass!” The vaguely considering tilt to his partner’s head almost made Dan regret having said that. Suddenly sick of the entire thing, he put his forehead in his palm. “God, you leave for a week--only a week, you’ve been gone longer than that before--and you come back as a homicidal maniac! What happened??”

All at once, Rorschach’s stance, which had relaxed slightly as they spoke, tensed twice as much as it had before. “Don’t ask me that,” he all but snarled. “Never ask me that.”

Whirling around, he stalked away and disappeared into the night, leaving Dan standing alone on the sidewalk, feeling impossibly angry and hurt.

++

In the years after, Dan would look back on the events of 1977 with a mixture of hatred and relief. Despite his best efforts, Rorschach had only been becoming more terse and violent, and Dan hadn’t known how much longer he could keep caring for his broken partner without screaming.

Then the Keene Act was passed, outlawing non-government-sanctioned vigilantes, and Dan had more than willingly laid his costume aside. Rorschach had heard, of course--there was no way he couldn’t have. It was one of the few times that Dan had been truly afraid that Rorschach would do him physical damage, but it never went that far. Instead, Rorschach had stalked out, flinging behind him words that would echo in Dan’s ears for many years to come:

“You’ve grown soft. Like everyone else.”

++

For years, Dan heard nothing from Rorschach. He went about his daily life, trying to pretend that he didn’t miss going out at three in the morning to do something stupid. But late at night, lying in his bed and staring at the shadows on the ceiling, he had to admit it, to himself if no one else.

Then one evening Rorschach reappeared, looking much the same as he always had, if more worn around the edges, with a wild story about the Comedian’s murder and a mask killer. Dan might have kicked him out for the fantasticness of the story alone--completely ignoring the fact that he had broken in and pillaged Dan’s cupboards--but he suddenly realized that it felt entirely too good to have Rorschach speaking to him again.

So he listened to Rorschach’s story as quietly as he could, and quietly exulted in having his partner back, for however short or long a time.

++

The next days were a complete mystery to Dan. It was almost like time had turned back to the 1970's and nothing had changed, like they were still partners. Almost, but not quite--he could still see the terseness and sense the violence that had been present when they parted ways, but it was near enough for Dan’s heart to ache.

Perhaps it was the nearness to the past which made Dan’s mind gravitate immediately to rescue when Rorschach was imprisoned. He knew that Laurie didn’t approve and even doubted his sanity when he put forth the suggestion, but the unquestioning silence from Rorschach when they ran into him on his way out of the prison made it more than worth it.

Then came the realization that Adrian Veidt, not a mask killer, was behind it all. That left only one option:

Travel to Antarctica and confront him.

++

Dan knew what was going to happen the moment he rushed out of the research facility and saw Rorschach standing stiffly in the snow, shoulders hunched, with Jon standing before him to block his way. There was no way that Rorschach was going to compromise, and there was no way he was going to leave without one.

Not alive, anyway.

As he looked on, Rorschach tore off his mask and threw it to the ground, exposing red hair and infinitely sad eyes. It took all that Dan had not to look away--this was the first time that he had ever seen his partner’s natural face, and to see it now felt wrong.

“Of course, you have to protect Veidt’s utopia,” Rorschach grated sarcastically. “...Do it.” In disbelief, Dan realized that it was tears he heard in his partner’s voice.

Jon made no move, didn’t even seem to hear.

Rorschach’s jaw clenched, and his face twisted as he shouted, “Do it!”

“No!”

++

Rorschach’s head snapped around to look at Dan, and at last Jon’s gaze focused on him as well.

“No,” Dan repeated, barely a whisper this time. “Please. I’ll do anything, just don’t kill him.” He glanced at Rorschach, who had resumed his tensed stance and refused to look at him. Even if he survived this, he would never speak to Dan again. But Dan found that he hardly cared, as long as Rorschach lived.

Jon stared at him in silence.

“Please,” Dan whispered.

Suddenly, Jon’s gaze swung towards Rorschach, his eyes searching. After a moment, he spoke one word:

“Agreed.”

Then he was gone in a flash of blue light.

Blinking the afterimage away, Dan looked up in time to see Rorschach waver for a moment, then collapse on the snow.

++

To this day, five years later, Rorschach remembers nothing about the events in Antarctica, or indeed, anything at all that occurred during the fifteen years predating those events. Dan has no idea what happened, but he long since assumed that it was some doing of Jon’s.

He and Laurie live in California now, so as to be near her mother. Rorschach drops by sometimes, long enough to share a little of what he’s been doing and for Dan to get some decent food into him. Dan’s current project is trying to get him to actually stay for dinner.

His partner is still not normal, but then again, he never was. He doesn’t remember whatever it was that drove him over the edge, at least, and Dan is determined that he will never remember, if he can help it. He wonders sometimes if that makes him a bad person. Rorschach doesn’t know anything about the atrocities that Veidt committed, either, and that’s another memory that Dan is determined that he will never recover. It would end badly for both of them.

He wonders what would happen if Rorschach should someday remember everything. The thought makes him shudder. His imagination, vivid though it can be at times, can’t conjure up the exact details but he can imagine enough--Rorschach would go on a rampage, tell anyone who would listen, and if that failed he would hunt Veidt down himself. And Dan knows how that would turn out; skilled though his partner is, Veidt is faster, and that would tip the scales. He already saw the proof of that in the research facility.

So Rorschach must never remember. However guilty hiding the truth makes Dan, it would make him more so to know that he had bargained for his partner’s life, only to lose him again. He will keep Rorschach with him in California, make sure that he encounters as few familiar things as possible, and lie to him about what happened.

He will lie to protect him.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this fulfills your Yuletide wishes. Personally, I feel as though I ought to have done something...more, I dunno, spectacular, but I always feel like that. *waves hands*  
> Getting you for a recipient this year made me feel much better about receiving an assignment for a fandom which I have never, ever, written before. (It is a proven fact that you will receive the assignment which, objectively, you are the most afraid of receiving.) However, I discovered--much to my delight--that we apparently love the fandom and the characters for the same reasons! So you helped me through what would have otherwise been an impossibly daunting assignment.  
> I hope I have done your request justice. And now that I've blathered into next Christmas, I will finish by summing up what I've been attempting to say this entire time: Thank you *so* much. You are awesome.


End file.
